The bluebottle, also known as the Portuguese Man o' War, inyongo (isiZulu), irhali (isiXhosa), or bloublasie (Afrikaans), is a siphonophore — a type of colonial jellyfish—often found washed up on beaches or floating on the ocean's surface. Its tentacles can deliver a painful sting upon contact due to the presence of numerous "nematocysts," or stinging cells.
In the Port St. Johns area, bluebottles are unwelcome visitors for another reason: fishers associate their presence with poor catches. Fishers involved in the ABALOBI Monitor trials in Port St. Johns made this interesting observation to an ABALOBI staff member. To see if fishers beyond the Port St. Johns area had made a similar association, ABALOBI ran a poll, asking its users if they also found catching fish harder with bluebottles around. Here are the results from fishers around South Africa:
👍 64.9% of respondents agreed that fishing gets tricky with bluebottles around.
👎 24.3% disagreed, saying it doesn't affect fishing.
🎣 And 10.8% had other thoughts. Some said spotting bluebottles means snoek are nearby, while others mentioned how annoying it is when their tentacles get tangled in fishing lines.
Small-scale fishers are on the frontlines of our oceans, collectively spending much more time in and around our marine resources than even the most devoted research teams. Fishing communities are repositories of multi-generational knowledge, observations, and experiences, the value of which is increasingly being acknowledged in modern research and fisheries management practices. Access to digital technologies can help fishers record their observations in real-time, drawing attention to phenomena that may otherwise go unnoticed.
Take a look at this video to see what other ecological observations have been flagged by fishers along the southern coast of South Africa.